Tallyrand Tamed,
or Wild Doug’s Sweet Dougie Now
by Marie
Cockrell
from
Diplomacy World #6
At the time I met Doug Beyerlein at
DIPCON 74, I, like many others, assumed that he was the infamous Tallyrand, who
once tried (unsuccessfully, thank God) to turn DIPWMACY WORLD into the
thinking man's locker room. I was thus taken by surprise when I learned that
Doug was an engineer. He did not write his moves with a mechanical pencil,
though, and he was nice, a loyal ally, liked almost everything I liked, and gave
me funny looks when he thought I wasn't watching, so I concluded that there was
hope.
There was. Two months later I was
being asked to come out to California for a visit, and three months later I was
being asked to be co-custodian of the Boardperson Numbers, The latter
I took to be a marriage proposal (and I hope Doug concurs with me on this).
As far as Doug and I know, we are
the only couple that has met through Diplomacy and has subsequently decided to
marry. If there are any single women reading this, I can't honestly
recommend wargaming as a way to meet eligible men. It is so terribly
difficult to be sweet and cute while threatening to blast a country off the map.
When I started postal play, I was sure that the men in my games would resent me.
Or if not, wouldn't they suppose that a female wargamer would be a big, mean
bruiser, a veritable Brunnhilde? Happily, they didn't. Some of them were even
rather intrigued by the whole idea. Doug was one of these.
Doug swept me off my feet with real
style. Did he wine and dine me, plying me with liquor while playing Rachmaninoff
on the stereo? Did we leap in slow motion through buttercup fields with the glow
of the soft-folcus sunset matching The Glow In Our Hearts? No, we took bike
rides , played tennis, and took hikes over innumerable ridges and through an
elevation gain and loss of 2,000 feet, sweating and panting and aching the
while. And is it possible to love someone who puts you through all that physical
hardship, alternately calls you a tough cookie and a soggy banana, expects
you to stay awake during his slide shows, and commands you to produce more
Diplomacy wins for the greater glory of the Beyerlein name? Well,
yes.
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